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Between the Academy and the Avant-Garde: Carl Einstein and Fritz

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Between the Academy and the Avant-Garde: Carl Einstein and Fritz Between the Academy and the Avant-Garde: Carl Einstein and Fritz Saxl Correspond Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/OCTO_a_00081/1753538/octo_a_00081.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 SPYROS PAPAPETROS Can we rethink art-historical discourse by recasting one of its most “academic” (to use a term of Bataille’s) or even “conservative” (to use a term of Carl Einstein’s) media, that of editorial correspondence? Moreover, what if we attempt to expand such correspondence from an epistolary exchange between two editors to a tenta - tive conceptual agreement between the institutions that these two individuals repre - sent? And what if the expressed objective of this correspondence—that is, the prospect of collaboration—ultimately fails: what form of intellectual or methodolog - ical affinities between the two parties might their aborted communication ultimate - ly disclose? The following sequence of letters describes an interrupted exchange between the representatives of two well-known institutions, whose circles appeared momentarily to intersect only to become tangential shortly thereafter. This transito - ry connection and its textual vestiges—in letters, archival manuscripts, and printed articles—indicates that the original subject of this editorial correspondence was ulti - mately correspondence in and of itself: an epistemological system based on reflection and analogy—two terms that both correspondents exhaustively theorized in their writings yet failed to carry out in their institutional relations. Analogy , correspondence , similarity , likeness , resemblance , and similitude are terms that have been used to describe the survival of premodern mentalities within the heterotopias of mid-nineteenth and twentieth-century modernisms. But likeness produces more likeness, and a similar homology or uncritical automatism informs the literature that attempts to interpret these recurring analogies. In his critique of Baudelaire’s “Correspondences,” Paul de Man cautions that “[t]he transcen - dence of substitutive, analogical tropes” associated with certain metaphors of like - ness occasionally states their “totalizing power” as they move “from analogy to identity and from simile to symbol and to a higher order of truth.” 1 Unlike other analogical parallels within the histories of modern art, anthropology, and litera - ture, the following exchange of letters constitutes a form of correspondence between an academic library and a purportedly avant-garde revue that is singular in the history of the two institutions. The brevity of this momentary encounter 1. Paul de Man, “Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric,” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 248. OCTOBER 139, Winter 2012, pp. 77–96. © 2012 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 78 OCTOBER Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/OCTO_a_00081/1753538/octo_a_00081.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 Letter from Carl Einstein to Fritz Saxl, January 30, 1929. Courtesy WIA, London. demonstrates that analogy has limits too, and that its sympathetic influence can - not always be generalized. 2 Documents/Documentation “January 30 th 1929: A French journal for Art and Archaeology titled Documents was created in Paris, whose first number appears in March . 56 pages in length, approximately the size of this letterhead, of these 24 are image-tables. Our journal is predominantly involved with archaeology, art history and ethnog - raphy.” This is the opening paragraph of a letter of introduction by Carl Einstein, member of the editorial committee of Documents , soliciting the partici - pation of Fritz Saxl, co-director of the Warburg Library for the Science of 2. For an early-twentieth-century analysis of analogical concepts, see Harald Høffding, Der Begriff der Analogie (Leipzig: O.R. Reisland, 1924). Høffding’s book was part of the Warburg library’s collection. For an English translation of Høffding’s theory, see his “On Analogy and Its Philosophical Importance,” Mind 14 (1905), pp. 199 –209. See also the classic study by G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (London: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Between the Academy and the Avant-Garde 79 Culture—Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW)—in Hamburg. 3 “I have followed your work, as well as the publications of your institute, with great interest,” continues Einstein, who states that he would be very pleased if a “link” could be established between the Hamburg center and the French journal. “Precisely your research methods provoke my strongest sense of partisanship,” Einstein emphasizes, and he indicates that he would be delighted to receive Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/OCTO_a_00081/1753538/octo_a_00081.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 works from the KBW scholars, particularly on the subjects of “the human figure as microcosm, the symbolic representation of bodies, zodiacs and horoscopes.” Saxl answered immediately with a two-page letter dated February 2 in which he thanks Einstein particularly for his offer to review the KBW publications in France. 4 Saxl underlines the aspiration of the Warburg Library to be “method - ologically relevant outside Germany and to strengthen connections with abroad.” Saxl accompanies his response with a copy of Panofsky’s Idea and proposes to send the manuscript of a lecture on the theme of “Macrocosm and Microcosm in the Images of the late Middle Ages”—a paper that Saxl had presented “years ago” at the Berlin Society for the Science of Religion—but questions whether it would be too long, warning further that the essay is written for “a public that has a more specialized interest in such documents and subjects.” Saxl also accompanies his let - ter with a printed list of KBW publications in which he underlines all works rele - vant to the research topics mentioned by Einstein. 5 The KBW publications appear to have raised Einstein’s interest, and in his reply of February 7 he asks for more of them to be sent, including works by Reitzenstein, Cassirer, and Norden (, the latter twoof whose lectures, as Einstein mentions, he had heard during his student days). Again the editor of the Parisian journal underscores the importance of common methodological patterns: “The problem setting that you exhibit in your studies always interested me rather lively, because it goes beyond banal research methods.” Einstein asks to read Saxl’s manuscript on the microcosm and suggests that if the entire work is too long, the editors of Documents could perhaps select a piece for publication. “An article for us can be four or five printed pages with three pages of images”; Einstein requests that Saxl let him know until what date he should wait for his contribution so that he might reserve a space. Saxl’s reply came only two weeks later, and was significantly shorter than his first letter. It was also less congenial, especially with regard to Einstein’s solicita - tion of articles by KBW members other than Saxl: “Panofsky and I may be one company-firm, but it is not so that I can write his articles for him . I have passed your proposal to Panofsky, but I would doubt that he could write this article [on “proportional figures”] in an instant.” 6 3. Warburg Institute Archive (WIA), General Correspondence (GC), Carl Einstein to Fritz Saxl, January 30, 1929, Paris. Iimages and quotations from archival material are published with the permission of the Warburg Institute. Letters between Einstein and Saxl have also been reprinted in Conor Joyce, Carl Einstein in Documents and His Collaboration with Georges Bataille (Bloomington, Indiana: XLibris, 2003), pp. 230 –38. 4. WIA, GC, Saxl to Einstein, February 2, 1929, Hamburg. 5. WIA, GC, Einstein to Saxl, February 7, 1929, Paris. 6. WIA, GC, Saxl to Einstein, February 20, 1929, Hamburg. 80 OCTOBER To save the collaboration from falling apart, Einstein answers immediately, announcing to Saxl that it was his publication on mythological and astrological manuscripts from the Middle Ages that would be reviewed in the very first issue of Documents, and asks for reproductions of two images from the book. 7 Einstein also reiterates his request to Saxl to forward the manuscript of his lecture and reas - sures him that if it proves too long, Saxl could perhaps send “an abstract or piece Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/OCTO_a_00081/1753538/octo_a_00081.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 from it of [his] choice with images.” For the third time, Einstein emphasizes the affinity in method: “I have already told you before that I enormously appreciate the methods of your circle and consider them to be very fruitful.” And Einstein further promises to review the publications sent by Saxl in detail. Saxl’s answer came almost one month later, on March 19, 1929, and was very brief: he had too much work at that moment to put together a manuscript that would be ready for publication. 8 But he did finally send a typescript of his entire lecture on “Microcosm and Macrocosm,” hoping that the editors of Documents “may perhaps find it possible to publish part of it.” Einstein answered five days later to thank Saxl for sending the typescript and promised that as soon as he had read it he could suggest in which form “this important and very interesting work” could be published in Documents .9 After which nothing was heard from either side for nearly seven months. On October 12 of the same year, Saxl, while in London working on a new catalog of illuminated manuscripts from British libraries, sent a note to one of the secretaries of the KBW in Hamburg to write to “a certain Dr. Einstein in Paris” and inquire about the manuscript that he had sent for publication a long time ago. 10 On October 18, Fräulein Ehrenberg wrote to Einstein asking if he was still interested in the typescript, otherwise he should return it to Hamburg.
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